of mine."

Syme took the cigar, clipped the end off with a cigar-cutter out of his
waistcoat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it slowly, and let out a long
cloud of smoke. It is not a little to his credit that he performed these
rites with so much composure, for almost before he had begun them the
table at which he sat had begun to revolve, first slowly, and then
rapidly, as if at an insane seance.

"You must not mind it," said Gregory; "it's a kind of screw."

"Quite so," said Syme placidly, "a kind of screw. How simple that is!"

The next moment the smoke of his cigar, which had been wavering across
the room in snaky twists, went straight up as if from a factory chimney,
and the two, with their chairs and table, shot down through the floor
as if the earth had swallowed them. They went rattling down a kind of
roaring chimney as rapidly as a lift cut loose, and they came with an
abrupt bump to the bottom. But when Gregory threw open a pair of doors
and let in a red subterranean light, Syme was still smoking with one leg
thrown over the other, and had not turned a yellow hair.

Gregory led him down a low, vaulted passage, at the end of which was
the red light. It was an enormous crimson lantern, nearly as big as a
fireplace, fixed over a small but heavy iron door. In the door there was
a sort of hatchway or grating, and on this Gregory struck five times. A
heavy voice with a foreign accent asked him who he was. To this he gave
the more or less unexpected reply, "Mr. Joseph Chamberlain." The heavy
hinges began to move; it was obviously some kind of password.

Inside the doorway the passage gleamed as if it were lined with a
network of steel. On a second glance, Syme saw that the glittering
pattern was really made up of ranks and ranks of rifles and revolvers,
closely packed or interlocked.

"I must ask you to forgive me all these formalities," said Gregory; "we
have to be very strict here."

"Oh, don't apologise," said Syme. "I know your passion for law and
order," and he stepped into the passage lined with the steel weapons.
With his long, fair hair and rather foppish frock-coat, he looked a
singularly frail and fanciful figure as he walked down that shining
avenue of death.

They passed through several such passages, and came out at last into a
queer steel chamber with curved walls, almost spherical in shape, but
presenting, with its tiers of benches, something of the appearance of
a scientific lecture-theatr